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“We are the most useless generation that ever was.”
Jashana Kippert said this for shock effect in the middle of
her talk on Eco-Villages on Maui: Fantasy or Possible Future hosted by Upcountry Sustainability. She pointed out
that our grandparents knew how to do things – alluding to growing and homesteading,
but that we don’t. She added that Cuba survived the embargo by asking
the older generation how to do things, like plow with an ox.
Note: These are my notes from the talk tonight. I could spend endless hours making this post more poetic or entertaining, but am choosing not to.. this is a more casual post.
Jashana talked about going
for her master’s degree and living in a dorm of 35
people. The first exercise was to figure out how to arrange the cooking of 3
meals, cleaning, and living together with 34 other people. Since it was a
degree in anthropology/social ecology, the idea was to test some of the ideas in class by
giving them a real life exercise in cooperation. She said her dorm spent hours
discussing how much household budget could go towards coffee, a
politically charged subject because of fair trade issues and the bloodshed
going on in Guatemala
at the time.
One book mentioned by Jashana was Post-Scarcity Anarchism, a textbook classic.
After graduate school, Jashana spent 7 years in Guatemala
during the mass genocide, trying to move indigenous people through an
“underground railroad” through a network of churches. Entire villages were
slaughtered and tortured. Anthropologists recorded the methods of torture to
trace to the generals who were schooled in those methods, and she said that the
path traced back ultimately to the US who had trained these generals.
She talked about doing skits in front of church audiences to convince them to
hide villagers.
Then she spent five years at
the Findhorn Community in Scotland,
a well known intentional community. She said the process involved some “endless
long discussions” where everyone talked and got their issues out on the table,
then meditated for 20 minutes, and they would come back to the table and often
agree to a totally different path that was the opposite of where they were
leaning prior to the meditation. She said it was powerful to see this process.
Jashana went back to teach
community building and other classes throughout South America, in countries
like Argentina
where she said the eco-village movement was helped in part by the government
falling apart. She said there are eco-villages up and down the coast of Argentina, with the same vibe as Vermont hippie
communities.
She also spent 9 years in Kipahulu, exploring a path to legitimize
an intentional community there through policies around farm worker dwelling
spaces. This may be the best path for Maui to
create eco-villages. [Note: there are some amazing people working on creating
farm land trusts, long term farm land leases that would support an agricultural
community with special provisions concerning additional farm dwelling spaces
and buildings.]
She talked about the
motivators for doing intentional communities or eco-villages. She mentioned the
“fear path” in which you scare people into thinking doomsday is here, so they organize
into an eco-village, but indicated she preferred the “vision path.” Per
Jashana, the ends do not justify the means, and motivating people into forming
eco-villages through scare tactics wasn’t how she wanted to go about things.
Yet she also talked about
what happens if the ships stop coming to Maui,
and there are only two weeks of food supply for the entire island. Hunger is a
powerful motivator. She said we aren’t nice when we’re hungry. We lose our
“la-la-land” attitude and our politeness.
She asked how much do any of
us grow to live on, questioned US consumption levels, all the usual questions
that one would expect at this kind of meeting, and then asked why people were
here at this meeting.
- Was it curiosity – did we want to see pretty slides of
eco-villages around the world, because she said she could certainly do that and
would enjoy it. About 10 or so hands went up.
- Was it some interest in maybe
forming an ecovillage on Maui, but without
committing? Another 20 hands went up.
- Or were some people frustrated and were
ready to be in an eco-village years ago? 30+ hands went up. Jashana said she
wanted to gauge the interest level of the audience and encouraged everyone to
look around the room, greet their neighbors, because “these are people you may
be working or living with.”
Some models Jashana touched
on included:
The farm or rural community.
She made an interesting observation here in talking about the use of wwoofers
on Maui, free labor and interns. She compared
Esalen, a beautiful meditation center which is a profit-making business with
Findhorn, a real community of people living and working together and making decisions
together. Findhorn has some “older and grayer people,” but this is a real
community. Esalen as a business enjoys the benefit of free labor - attractive, young
interns, and doesn’t have to take care of “older and grayer people.” Esalen is
not a real community. Real communities have real people, not disposable or free
labor, and they have to take care of those real people. I don’t think she was
condemning the use of interns or free labor, but pointing out that places who
use them are not “true communities.”
Co-housing or shared spaces
that also allow some boundaries. These types of communities are good to
introduce people to the concept of sharing and making decisions together, while
also giving people some space to be on their own.
Eco-village. Jashana defines
eco-village as a whole system of living that is somehow in relationship with
the land/nature. I don’t have her exact definition. She moved on rather
quickly.
We left before her talk
ended. At least going partly is an
improvement from missing her talk completely last year, and being unsuccessful
in reaching her via email or phone. Community is an ongoing and stimulating
conversation.
With all the hippies and sensitive new age types, aka “conscious
creatives” on Maui, there is a LOT of interest
in intentional community and eco-villages, as evidenced by the full room
turn-out tonight. Jashana does seem
real, she has lived in community, which is a contrast to people who fantasize
about living in community. Jashana made several quips about the “endless long
discussions” that can happen in community and how it is a form of meditation to
ask one’s ego to step aside, and then politely ask, “Should we try another
perspective?” DH has also visited countless intentional communities and
eco-villages and nodded at several of her points.
A friend of ours just moved
back to the mainland, saying that he found more support and energy for
intentional community in two weeks outside San Diego
than in two years on Maui. The intentional
community conversation has been going on for a long time.
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